Author Archives: woit

Falsifiability and Physics

Posted on April 23, 2019 by woit

Symmetry magazine today published an article on Falsifiability and physics, yet another in the genre of defense of current HEP theory against its critics. As usual, only defenders of the status quo are quoted, the critics remain unnamed and their … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

This and That

Posted on April 16, 2019 by woit

Since you’ve read about the black hole image elsewhere, here are a few other items that might be of interest: I was sorry to hear today of the death on April 11 of Geoffrey Chew. Throughout the 1960s, Chew’s S-matrix/bootstrap … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

Why Trust a Theory?

Posted on April 5, 2019 by woit

I noticed today that Cambridge University Press has recently published Why Trust a Theory?, a volume of articles based on a December 2015 conference held in Munich. The book is available online here (if your university is paying for it…), … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 26 Comments

Not Even Wrong 2.0

Posted on March 31, 2019 by woit

This blog has just passed its 15th anniversary, and there hasn’t been a lot of change in format since the first postings in March 2004 (there hasn’t been a lot of change in string theory either, but that’s a different … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 116 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 31, 2019 by woit

This week’s hype comes to us courtesy of Scientific American, which, based on this preprint, tells us: Found: A Quadrillion Ways for String Theory to Make Our Universe. As usual in these things, the only physicists quoted are the authors … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 8 Comments

Some Quick Items

Posted on March 25, 2019 by woit

A few quick items: This past weekend I went to see the new film Out of Blue, which sounded promising: a murder mystery based on a Martin Amis book, set in New Orleans, starring Patricia Clarkson, with a plot involving … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Uncategorized | 13 Comments

The Shape of a Life

Posted on March 23, 2019 by woit

I just finished reading The Shape of a Life, which is the great geometer Shing-Tung Yau’s autobiography, co-authored with Steve Nadis. It’s quite fascinating, and an essential read for anyone interested in the history of modern mathematics. Yau has been … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 7 Comments

This Month’s Hype

Posted on March 14, 2019 by woit

Physics Today seems to have decided to deal with Sabine Hossenfelder’s criticism of a future collider by publishing the least credible possible response: a column by Gordon Kane arguing that string theory predicts new particles of just the right mass … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 31 Comments

In it for the Long Haul

Posted on March 8, 2019 by woit

The CERN Courier today has a long interview with the omnipresent Nima Arkani-Hamed, discussing the current state of HEP physics. About the motivations for a next-generation collider project, I’m pretty much in agreement with him: the main argument is for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 5, 2019 by woit

In recent years string theorists have been having trouble getting taken seriously by the media, a problem they’ve been trying to deal with by enlisting the PR departments of their universities to help. Following Princeton and Stanford, today’s the turn … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 9 Comments